Devotions

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotions than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotions, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hands. 

C.S. Lewis

CS Lewis

I have read the first two chapters in this book today and I love it!! If you are a fan or CS Lewis or enjoy any of his writing, I highly recommend this book. I have skimmed bits and pieces of the rest of the book and I look forward to finishing it, hopefully, this week. It puts into words why I love Lewis so much. 

I leave you with a quote from the appendix (because I read some of the appendix first). This is from an interview with John Piper about Lewis. 

"He was already out of date in the 1930s. Therefore he's no more out of date today than he was then. Since he was out of date in the 1930s, he is perpetually relevant. You don't need any more cool, hip, relevant people. You need somebody with roots who is so bright intellectually and so creative imaginatively that he communicates to your deepest needs."

And from Douglas Wilson from the same interview, "Speaking of relevance, Lewis once said, 'whatever's not eternal is eternally out of date.'"

The Problem of Pain CS Lewis

I just finished The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis. I highly recommend it.  I have other quotes to share, but I thought I would start off with the last paragraph in the book.  I just love the way Lewis writes.  The more I read Lewis, the more I am glad I named my son after him.  :) 

"The size and emptiness of the universe which frightened us at the onset of this book, should awe us still, for though they may be no more than a subjective by-product of our three-dimensional imagining, yet they symbolize great truth. 

As our earth is to all the stars, so doubtless are we men and our concerns to all creation; as the stars are to space itself, so are all creatures, all thrones and powers and mightiest of the created gods, to the abyss of the self-existing Being, who is to us Father and Redeemer and in dwelling Comforter, but of whom no man or angel can say nor convince what he is in and for Himself, or what is the work that he 'maketh from the beginning to the end'. 

For they are all derived and unsubstantial things. Their vision fails them and they cover their eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality, which was and is and shall be, which never could have been otherwise, which has no opposite."